Battlefield
by Amry
Summary: Edward has seen many soldiers, but he's never smelled the battlefield smoke so strongly as from the man who stands beside his mother. RoyxTrisha
1. Prologue

((My first multi-chaptered, serious fanfic for any fandom; my first fic period for the FMA fandom. Plot suggested by furvacatta, who's also beta-ing. This is entirely anime-verse. Concrit much appreciated; I own nothing; please enjoy!))

The soldier has bandages around his head and bulging under his left sleeve. There are scorch marks and bullet holes all through his blue coat, faded from sand-scrubbing, and though they're clean, no amount of polish will make those black boots shine again. His unhealed wounds are gruesome under layers of gauze. But somehow, it's easier for Edward to look at them than to meet this soldier's eyes.

The day is clear and the air smells of impending summer mixed with gunpowder. Before the soldier climbed the hill to the house, it only smelled like summer. Edward stands in the shade of the tree he had been playing under, his expression wary. He's seen soldiers before.

"Hey, kid." The solider makes a weary attempt to smile, but it only serves to deepen the circles under his eyes. "Is your mother around?"

Edward hesitates, nods, backs up a few steps, then turns and pelts for the house. He's only nine, but not too young to recognize the smell of battlefield smoke in the man's clothes, the smell that somehow sharpened when he smiled.

He's seen soldiers many times before, but the smell has never been so strong.

"Mom!' The back door slams against the wall as Edward dashes in and slams again behind him as he comes to a screeching halt in the kitchen, where his mother peels potatoes by the window. "Mom-- outside-- a solider--"

Trisha Elric frowns, sets down her knife, and leans to look out the window, around the side of the house. She can just make out a patch of blue, now sitting beneath the tree in the front yard. "Ed," she says, and though her eyes are worried her frown does not reach her voice. "Get him a glass of water, would you? He must be tired." She goes out, not noticing the potato still in her hand. She's been forgetful like that lately - Ed figures it's the war. It makes Aunt Pinako sad and forgetful, too.

He runs to the pump behind the house with a tall glass he climbed on the counter to reach (he's not supposed to do that, but Mom forgot to give him one) and fills it, wishing Alphonse would come back from Winry's so he could affirm the uneasy feeling in Ed's stomach. Al usually feels the same way about people that Ed does. Maybe it's just his little-boy way of making Ed feel better; but right now Ed wants someone else to smell the smoke coming off the soldier and get the same chilly tingle down his spine that he did. He wants someone who will hide behind their mother's skirt for him, because as much as the soldier makes him want to, he has already made a subconscious promise to himself that he never will. (Funny, that sense of permanence - he'll look back on that later, not that the thought crosses his mind now.)

Suddenly, his mother laughs. The sound echoes over the trickle of the pump, real and a little surprised. He stands paralyzed for a moment - _when's the last time she laughed like that? _- and as soon as the laughter turns back to the murmur of conversation he trots to the front as quickly as he can, balancing the soldier's glass of water.

They're standing close together - not quite close enough to touch, but enough that Ed breaks into a run when he sees them, not caring if the water sloshes onto his feet. He squeezes himself between them, all but forcing the soldier back a step, and holds the glass up. He glares up with all the tiger-like protectiveness he can, bare toes curling defiantly in the grass. "Here," he snaps. "Drink it."

The soldier takes the glass with his uninjured arm and smiles his weary almost-smile. "Thanks." He drinks slowly, and does not return the glass to Ed when he is done; he turns it absently in his hand, looking at Trisha, waiting for her to reply to whatever Ed now realizes he interrupted. Ed frowns up at him, about to demand the glass back, but his mother's hand on his head quiets him.

"We have a bed in the loft," she says, "And there's a doctor in the town. You can stay here until you're ready to travel all the way to Central." She smiles, but there's no trace of the laughter of before in it; it's sad and far away, the smile that Ed knows best. "It's peaceful here. A good place to heal."

The solider nods. A little of the weariness has already gone out of his face. "Thank you, Mrs. Elric. I shouldn't stay more than a week... but if Central insists, I could be gone in two days." His mouth twists a little at the corner, as if to say _What can you do?_ and _Let them try_ at the same time. He looks down at Ed, whose face registers pure dismay, and hands him the empty glass. "So, shrimp, what should I call you?"

Trisha covers her mouth with one hand, hiding a smile as Ed's mouth opens and closes with soundless rage. By the time he finds his voice, the soldier has picked up his single carpetbag and is following Trisha to the house, his smile a little wider at the shrieks from behind him.

"Did I hear him say his name is Edward somewhere in all that?" he asks, and Trisha chuckles.

"Yes. That's Edward. His brother Alphonse will be home at suppertime." She looks back and beckons to her son, and he grudgingly begins to follow them - at a distance. "He's headstrong, but he'll be used to you soon enough."

"Thanks again. I'm sorry to impose."

"Not at all, Major. You're welcome here."

"I'd prefer if you left off my title, ma'am." His smile has faded. His mouth is set in a rueful line, and he stares at the path with eyes as far away as her smile. "I'll get enough of that from my men back in Central."

She looks at him with sympathy he does not notice. "Mr. Mustang, then...?"

He shakes his head, glances up, and puts his weary smile back on. She's struck by the pain in his face - but not pain like his wounds are bothering him or even pain like he's seen something terrible, though they are evident in the premature lines between his eyes and the circles beneath them. He looks as though he has lost something precious - or like something precious has given him up. She knows this pain well. She sees it every time she looks in the mirror.

"Just call me Roy," he says.

Her hand moves a little, like she wants to rest it on his head as if he were one of her boys. But she transfers the movement to smoothing her skirt and gives him a smile of her own, soft and gentle and endlessly wistful.

"Call me Trisha," she says.

Ed watches them as they walk into the house side by side. He hopes Alphonse comes home soon. He needs someone else not to understand.


	2. Secrets

(Thank you so much for reviews, support, etc.! Enjoy chapter two!)

Ed's mother would not let him call the soldier "Roy." He and Alphonse had to call him "Mr. Mustang." Ed had had to explain to Al the first night of the soldier's stay that "Mister" wasn't a military rank after Al had asked hesitantly whether that meant he was higher than a lieutenant or not (not that he had the slightest clue about the ranks of the military hierarchy anyway, but then, he was only eight and entitled to stupid questions as long as Ed was around to sort him out). In some ways, it was an understandable mistake - Al had seen privates, colonels, majors, and sergeants come and go, but this was the first "mister" he'd ever seen in a blue uniform. The soldier had only laughed.

Ed spoke to the soldier only when he had to. Mr. Mustang did not smile often, and when he did it was grim or rueful or cynical, and always looked like it was a struggle to force his face into it. He walked slowly through the house or stayed in his room all day, and every night Ed heard the bedsprings in the loft bed creak with his tossing and turning. He did not invite conversation, and after Ed had seen him stand so close to his mother, seen their shoulders almost brush as the soldier had stepped back to let her in the front door the afternoon before, Ed had nothing to say to him.

On the second day, the soldier left in the morning, leaving his blue jacket behind. As he passed through the kitchen, carrying his black boots, Al leaned as far forward in his chair as he could, all but standing on the table to watch him go by. His eyes were fixed on the bandage around the soldier's arm, clearly visible under the light fabric of his white shirt - the brownish-red of the gauze showed through. Ed, seated across the table from his brother, glared at him.

"Sit down, Al," he hissed. "It's rude to stare."

"How do you think he got it, brother? It looks like it hurts."

"Yeah, that's what happens in a war. Now sit down and finish your oatmeal."

Al bit his lip and sat, but craned his neck to watch as the soldier bent stiffly to pull on his boots at the door. Another stained bandage showed through the back of his shirt, far larger than the other. Al gulped audibly.

The soldier stood. "Fire and shrapnel," he said, his back to them. His expression might have said anything. "They're worse than bullets sometimes." He turned, nodded to the boys, and left, shutting the back door behind him.

"I hope you boys weren't prying." Their mother had appeared in the doorway just as the soldier had left, unnoticed by Ed and Al. She rested one arm against the doorjamb, looking at them reproachfully.

Al smiled sheepishly at her and sat back in his chair. "No, Mom. He just overheard us."

Trisha crossed the kitchen, brushing a hand through Al's hair as she passed him. "War does terrible things to people. More than bandages can show. Try not to bring up the war around Mr. Mustang, all right, boys?"

They nodded, though Al's face gave away his wish to hear the stories behind the soldier's wounds. Ed told himself firmly that he didn't care. In a week the soldier would be gone anyway.

He finished his oatmeal and carried the bowl to his mother to wash, then started for the back door. "Mom, I'm going to Winry's!" Al quickly gulped down the rest of his and ran after his brother. "Me, too!"

Trisha shook her head. "Wait a moment, you two. You have a few chores to do before you go."

"Nope!" Ed grinned. "I already did all mine."

"Yeah, me, too!" Al had one hand on the doorknob. "Can we please go, Mom? Please?"

She reached for the bucket of pump water standing on the counter and dunked the bowls in it. "I didn't have time yesterday, but the blankets on that loft bed could use some airing. The whole room needs to be dusted, actually. Since Mr. Mustang isn't here, you boys do that now."

Ed opened his mouth to argue, but Al preempted him with a mournful "Okay... we'll go do it, Mom." Before Ed could salvage his argument, his mother smiled and handed him a rag. He was trapped.

Five minutes later, they were mounting the stairs to the loft, lugging cleaning rags and brooms. "Geez, Al! We coulda gotten out of it if you hadn't gone and opened your mouth! Now we're stuck cleaning someone else's room!"

"I'm sorry, brother... I didn't know--"

"It's common sense!"

"I'll remember next time!"

"Yeah, but this time we have to dust everything!"

Al fell into reproached silence and followed his brother up the stairs.

The loft room was separated from the rest of the house only by a turn in the staircase; there was no door. The last step creaked under Ed's feet and again under Al's, and the bare floorboards groaned in the middle of the room when they passed over them. The loft was seldom used, as the Elrics rarely had guests; the dust lay in a thin layer on everything, and the single lightbulb hanging from the sloped ceiling did not respond to being switched on. The morning light fell through the window and onto the bed, neatly made. The soldier's jacket lay flung across it.

Al stepped hesitantly closer to the bed, as though afraid that someone would catch him, and stared at the scorch marks burned deep into the blue cloth. The right sleeve was almost entirely black. "There must have been a lot of fire in Ishbal, brother. Maybe he saved someone from a fire and that's why the sleeves are all burned up."

"Maybe. Less talk, more dusting, Al." Ed tossed him a rag, and Al began to dust the headboard of the bed, the better to stare at the jacket further.

"Maybe," he said after a moment, "Maybe he was defending a building and the Ishbalans shot at him. Or--!" His eyes lit up with sudden inspiration. "Maybe he was like Winry's parents and he was helping the Ishbalans and somebody else shot at him and that's why the bottom's torn up here--"

Ed struck the shelf he was dusting with a tight fist, his teeth gritted. Al jumped and turned, alarmed. "It doesn't matter!" Ed snapped, glaring down at his dusting rag. "His jacket's torn up, yeah - I told you, that's what happens in a war! So just drop it, okay?"

"I was just curious, brother..."

"He's not gonna be here much longer, so there's no point in thinking about it. Okay, Al? He'll be gone in a week and then you'll never think about him again." Scowling, Ed attacked the shelf with his rag, scouring it rather harder than necessary.

Al was quiet for a moment. "Brother, why don't you like Mr. Mustang?"

Ed's hand faltered. He sighed. "You weren't there the day he came here, Al. You didn't see him with Mom."

"What did he do?"

"They were standing close together, and then they left and went in the house at the same time. And she smiled at him, Al. She smiled at him like she always smiles at us. The same way." He scowled. "He didn't deserve that. He's just some sad old soldier. And he called me short."

Al glanced at the jacket. "Let's finish dusting, brother. He'll be back soon."

They dusted. Al finished the headboard and moved on to the desk in the corner with a tinge of regret. Ed climbed a stack of books to dust the highest shelf he could reach and left the rest, figuring that the soldier had known worse conditions. Together they tackled the desk in the corner. And that was where they found the gloves.

A box rested on top of the desk beside the lamp. It was small and made of metal painted a chipped and faded black; the seal of the state was stamped into the dented lid. Ed reached and touched it gently. He glanced at Al.

Al nodded and put his hand on the box. Together they drew it forward and pried off the lid, misshapen around the box from travel in the soldier's carpetbag.

Inside lay a pair of once-white gloves, neatly folded, the cloth thin and dull gray-brown. Ed picked one up. The cloth of the fingers was frayed; the end of the thumb clung only by a few threads. The back was as scorched as the arm of the jacket had been - save for the red circle sewn into it.

"Al... that's a transmutation circle." Ed ran his fingers gently over the red, holding the glove closer to the light and squinting at the design. "But I've only seen this in Dad's books." He showed it to his brother. "Look at the triangles. And the flame. Fire alchemy?"

"That... that one book said it doesn't exist."

They turned as one to look back at the jacket on the bed, and suddenly the scorch marks seemed much more ominous.

Slowly, Ed replaced the glove, folding it neatly with the other, and shut the box. Together they pushed it back to its corner of the desk and wordlessly began to sweep.

"Hey, Al."

"Yes, brother?"

"Remember what Mom said about not talking to the soldier about the war?"

"Yeah."

"I think those gloves count as the war. Okay?"

"...Okay."

The soldier returned after lunch with fresh bandages, a haircut, and his collar open against the spring warmth. He hesitated at the back door, unsure of whether or not to knock; after a moment, he rapped twice and stepped inside. A compromise.

Mrs. Elric - no, Trisha, she had said - sat at the kitchen table. The sun through the window fell on her face. She gazed into middle distance with half-closed eyes, her legs crossed under the wooden chair, chin resting in one hand. She did not appear to notice him.

The soldier felt that he should make his presence known somehow; he still felt like an intruder in this quiet, sunny house. What did it say that he might have felt more at home if the walls had been bloodstained, he wondered. He cleared his throat.

Trisha blinked. Her eyes focused and she sat up. She looked as though she had been awoken from a light sleep; one in which she had been dreaming of sadness.

"Mr.-- no, Roy," she said, and smiled. "Did it go well?"

He bent to take off his boots, and the movement was less stiff than before. "You have a good doctor in town. I'm like a new man." He stood, stretched, and made a motion as if to brush his hair out of his eyes before remembering with his hand halfway there that he no longer needed to. He let it drop, and they chuckled into the awkward silence.

After a moment, she gestured to the empty chair across from her. "Sit down. Are you hungry?"

"No, I ate in town. And thank you." He crossed the room and sat, too far forward on the chair. "I talked to my superiors in Central - they're giving me a month's leave." He looked relieved and tired, very tired; he looked as though a month would never be enough to remove the circles from under his eyes. "Of course, I won't be bothering you that long."

"It's no trouble," Trisha said. Her chin rested on her hand again, and she gave him a happier smile. "The boys are fascinated with you."

He smiled back, ruefully. "Kids always like a soldier."

"Mr. Mustang!" Roy and Trisha turned to the doorway, where Al pelted in, throwing glances over his shoulder. The sound of pounding feet and a distant cry of /"Alphonse!"/ echoed down the stairs, but Al spit out as fast as he could, "Mom, is Mr. Mustang an alchemist? 'Cause brother said--"

"_Alphonse_!" Ed appeared and all but tackled Al, getting him in a headlock and making to drag him out of the room. "What's _wrong_ with you? I told you not to--" He looked up, saw the soldier, and froze. Al struggled halfheartedly for a moment and gave up.

It was silent for a long moment. Presently Roy said, his voice heavy, "You found the gloves, didn't you?"

Edward's eyes tried to find a place to settle, but there was nowhere to go but the soldier's face. There was no point in a lie now. "Yeah, we found them," he said, trying to sound like he didn't know he'd done something wrong and almost succeeding. "Are you a fire alchemist?"

The soldier said nothing, but the muscles around his jaw tightened imperceptibly. He rubbed his thumb and first finger together mechanically.

"It's not supposed to be possible," Ed went on, "but the circles were drawn right, and the coat was singed--"

The soldier stood. Ed shut up.

"You kids stay _out_ of my things. Do you hear me?" He nodded to Trisha and left the room. They were quiet until they heard the distant creak of the loft bedsprings.

Trisha looked at them with deep disappointment. "He's a guest, Edward. Where are your manners? Even if he weren't a soldier--"

"He's an alchemist, Mom! We were curious--"

She cut him off sharply. "That's no excuse! You will go up an apologize to him later. Both of you." Al wriggled pointedly. "Edward, let go of your brother." She stood, supporting herself on the table with one hand. She looked suddenly tired. "Finish your chores. Don't bother Mr. Mustang. I'm very disappointed in both of you." Ed and Al were left to stare at their feet as she walked out the back door, taking the basket of laundry by the door with her as she went.

Al turned to Ed, looking about to cry. "S-sorry, brother... I didn't mean to get us in trouble..."

Ed didn't answer for a moment. He stared up the stairs, consternation on his face. "I want to know how he uses those gloves."

"Brother! After what Mom said?"

Ed sighed and looked away from the stairs. "Nah. Like I said, I'm just curious. I'm not gonna ask." He left the room, glancing at the stairs one more time before he turned down the narrow hallway. "I'm going to weed the garden."

Al looked between the back door, the front door, and the stairs for a moment, torn. Finally, he trotted after his brother, calling, "I'll help, brother. Wait for me."

The front door slammed twice, and the house was still.

Roy Mustang sat on the edge of the loft bed, the gloves in his lap. He slid one on, and the thin cloth shaped itself to his fingers perfectly. He flexed his fingers once, grunted with disgust, and tore the glove off, falling back on the bed to stare at the ceiling.

Why, he wondered, would anyone in their right mind ever want children?


	3. Safety

Thanks again for all reviews, faves, etc. - I can update more regularly now that school's out, so expect more soon! All concrit is greatly, greatly appreciated, especially relating to characterization.

* * *

Trisha's favorite place was at the kitchen table, when the midmorning sun shone through the wide window (she'd never put curtains on it for that reason) and the light pine glowed warm in the light. It was a simple table - four uncarved legs, four pine chairs around it, one a shade darker than the others from years in the back of the closet, all resting on wood floor - but she liked white walls and good smells around her when she just wanted to let her mind wander. Her mornings at the kitchen table were one of the few escapes she allowed herself anymore.

The morning after Ed and Al found the soldier's gloves, she went down early - so early only a corner of the table was yet illuminated by brightening sunlight - and sat in the fourth chair, nearest the small spot of light. The stairs were still dark; no sound came from the boys' room. But she could hear the soldier's bedsprings creaking in the loft, and she wondered how much he had slept last night. Or any night.

She didn't mind the sound. The first day of his stay she had gone up to turn the mattress and heard the squeaks as it landed on the ancient bedspring and wondered how she would sleep if he got up in the night - in the quiet country, the sound would be enough to wake the whole house. But days had gone by, and she had found herself beginning to listen for it. It had been so long since she had waited for someone else to wake up, since she had heard heavy footfalls on the stairs in the morning and heard a deep voice ask for breakfast.

_Hohenheim was restless at night, toward the end. _She remembered waking countless nights to see him sitting on the edge of the bed, hair hanging around his shoulders, eyes closed but unable to sleep. She remembered the countless nights she had tried to comfort him and how, on the last night, he had kissed her deep and let her fall asleep in his arms. And she remembered that the look on his face that last night - the weariness, the eyes full of hurt and aimless purpose, the distance in his gaze - had been just like the soldier's. And the next morning he had been gone.

When the bedsprings creaked in the night, she dreamed of Hohenheim.

The soldier came down when a third of the table was illuminated, shaking sleep from his eyes and trying to comb a stubborn cowlick from his hair with his fingers. He was dressed in civilian's clothes that obviously had not seen the outside of a traveling bag for some time, but he did not look so harsh as in his uniform. He halted when he saw her in the kitchen.

"Morning," he said.

Trisha smiled. "Good morning." She stood slowly, bracing one hand on the table, and moved to the cupboard, withdrawing a pot. "Would you like some tea?"

"Please." He sat, stretching his legs out under the table. The movement did not seem to pain him. "You were right about this being a good place to heal. It's beautiful here. More peaceful than anything I've seen in... a long time." The rising sun shone on the lower half of his face, illuminating a small smile.

Trisha wondered if her face looked as peaceful as his did when the sun shone through the window and painted the air gold as it did now. Or as weary. "If only the boys would let you heal in peace, right?" She shook her head. "I'm sorry about yesterday. They just don't understand that curiosity can't always be satisfied."

For a brief second, Roy's eyes joined his mouth in the smile and he waved a hand noncommittally. "They're kids. I'm sorry I told them off like that. It wasn't my place, as a guest."

Bubbles rose to the surface of the water in the pot and Trisha stretched up to take down the teapot and a small bag of loose-leaf tea. "No, they were definitely in the wrong this time," she said. "But I'm sure Al will be knocking on your door before the day's out, tears in his eyes, begging you to forgive him and looking like he wants to hide behind something."

"But not Edward?" Roy asked, turning his head away from the sky outside to look at her with one eyebrow raised.

Trisha shook her head. "He might appear over breakfast, mumble a sorry, and run for Winry's," she said, "But he won't act contrite. I know he feels badly, though."

"They're good kids."

"Thank you. They truly are." She poured the tea, carried the cups to the table and sat across from him, her back to the window. The steam rising from the tea combined with the light from behind to make her seem to glow from within, a halo surrounding her and masking the tiredness in her face.

Roy took one of the cups and sipped, breaking eye contact. The sudden shift from the light all around her to the depths of his teacup nearly blinded him. "Do you need any help today?" he asked. "Around the house, I mean. I have nothing else to do today; I might as well earn some of this hospitality."

Trisha opened her mouth to refuse as good manners dictated - no, you're a guest, you're wounded, thank you so much for the offer but I have it under control, just relax today, Mr. Mustang - and said, "Would you like to help me hang the laundry?"

The kitchen was empty when Edward padded down the stairs, rubbing sleep from his eyes and blinking in the sunlight that now lit up the entire table. "Mom?" he called. There was no answer. Figuring she was in town or at the Rockbells', he crossed the room and stood on tiptoe to reach for an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter.

That was when he saw them.

The clothesline outside hung between the great tree in the front and the side of the house, clearly visible from the window through which the morning light streamed. His mother and the soldier stood under it, each holding up one end of a sheet, and though they stood three feet apart Edward kept seeing them as they had stood that first day - so close they almost touched, so close their hands or their hearts might have been reaching for each other--

The apple rolled across the floor and bumped against the wall as the back door slammed. He could not face them, would not watch them turn at the same time to see him go past, maybe smiling at him, maybe sharing that look of sadness that should have belonged to his mother alone. He would not look at them next to each other and be reminded of his father. Ed ran the whole way to Winry's and did not look back.

* * *

Roy hung the sheet carefully, aware of the wound at his shoulder, but it did not hurt him so much today. The weather was warm and his collar was open, his sleeves rolled up. Trisha wore no shoes. She was a beautiful woman, he thought, looking at her across the sheet they hung together. She had peace in her face - she looked in place, standing in the kitchen or with her hand on one of her sons' heads or sitting at the kitchen table staring into the sunlight. It had been too long since he had seen a pair of eyes not wide with terror, or narrowed to squint down a gun barrel, or squeezed shut against the flash of oxygenated air igniting--

"Mr. Mustang?"

He had dropped the sheet.

He stared at it dumbly for a moment, then bent slowly to pick it up. His hands were shaking. He clutched the linen tightly to hide it. "Sorry," he managed to say. "My shoulder."

Trisha smiled, and he realized that there was more than peace in her face. There was sadness there, too, as deep as his own.

She asked no questions, but turned to fix the sheet to the clothesline. "Thank you for your help," she said.

"It's no trouble." His voice was dead weight. He had thought he was forgetting. He had thought that those images were relegated only to nightmares. He raised the sheet, reached for a clothespin. They worked in silence, and when the sheets were hung, she gave him a smile and returned to the kitchen, leaving him to stand under the tree and stare at the sky.

After so long surrounded by smoke and flame and screams, this clean quietness felt like a lie. How could they exist at the same time? And how could you switch so quickly between them without breaking?

Roy didn't know.

* * *

Edward stayed at Winry's as long as he dared. The sun was already beginning to sink when he trudged home, sure that a scolding waited for him there. He'd missed lunch, skipped his chores, and not yet apologized to the soldier as his mother had told him to do. The thought of going back to that attic room made his stomach twist. He didn't want to be near the soldier. He didn't want to smell battlefield smoke anymore. He didn't want to know that the gloves were there, faded and full of secrets, and feel curious about them when they belonged to the man who thought he had the right to make his mother smile. Scowling, Ed kicked a rock down the hill to the river, but it stopped short of the water and even the satisfaction of the splash was denied him.

Al had fresh tear tracks on his face when Ed climbed the stairs to their room, still smarting from the scolding he'd gotten. He was wiping them away with a corner of his blanket, looking miserable and relieved at the same time.

"You apologized to him, huh?" Ed said, throwing himself down on his own bed.

Al sniffed and nodded. "He said it's okay. He's only going to stay another week or two. He said thanks for putting up with him. He's really not so scary, brother."

"What'd you expect him to do? Bite your head off? Use fire alchemy?"

"I don't know… I was scared he was going to yell at me again."

"He wasn't scary even when he yelled." In truth, though, the thought of going up to apologize frightened Ed almost as much as it repulsed him. The soldier's eyes were so _empty,_ even when he yelled. He lay and stared at the ceiling for a moment longer.

"Are you going to go up and apologize?"

"Yeah." Ed sat up, hopped off the bed, and left the room, hands shoved in his pockets, scowling as convincingly as he could.

He climbed the stairs to the loft room quietly, somehow afraid of disturbing the soldier even though he was about to walk into his room. The door was slightly ajar, the light apparently repaired. Ed rehearsed what he would say in his mind - _Sorry I looked at your gloves, sorry I went in your room, I won't do it again, sorry. _Honestly, he wasn't all that sorry, but the more one said it the more adults seemed to think you meant it. Maybe because of kids like Al who really did.

He stopped in front of the door. The bed inside squeaked slightly. Ed steeled himself, took a deep breath, held a hand up to the doorknob - and at the last second couldn't bring himself to open the door.

Feeling foolish, he glanced around, as though afraid someone had seen his moment of cowardice, then leaned forward and peered through the crack in the door.

The soldier sat on the bed, in profile from where Ed stood, staring down at his hands. He held a gun.

Edward did not dare to move.

The soldier turned the gun over, looked at it from a different angle. He brought it close to his face and pointed it away from himself. He turned it around again and held it to his temple, but then his hand began to shake and he returned it to his lap. The light of the desk lamp made the circles under his eyes deeper, the trembling of his jaw more pronounced.

"The safety's off," he whispered to no one.

Edward swallowed hard, then turned and crept down the stairs even more quietly than he had come.

He'd apologize tomorrow.

Al looked up and smiled as Ed entered their room. "See, Brother? It wasn't so bad, right?"

"...Go to sleep, Al."


End file.
